let's make our neighbourhood more delicious!
projects and activities for delicious landscaping at and around Mairangi Arts Centre, and "around here"...
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working and playing for delicious times at and around Mairangi Arts Centre
- ALL AGES, ALL KINDS, ALL TIMES! -Follow updates HERE
See schedule here
First Main Project (Nov 2017 - April 2018)
++ Check the schedule (always updating)
The Delicious Landscape Project is a programme of free public workshops and activities at and around Mairangi Arts Centre, with a focus on the creative and community-building possibilities of food.
Activities include preserving, juicing, utensil carving, ceramics, neighbourhood feasts, educational walks, and DIY permaculture gardening projects around MAC.
This project is an experimental and exploratory first step to develop awareness and "dig out" interested parties, with a view towards developing an ongoing programme around the multi-sensory medium of food.
Main collaborators: Chris Berthelsen, Tracey Sunderland, Shota Matsumura, Jack Tilson, and Rain Zuo/Galaxy Crafting Workshop.
make
serving dishes with clay carved out of the collapsing cliffs of Mairangi Bay
the utsuwa, vessel, holder contributes much to what it contains.
fruit, shelter, experimentation
did you know there were banana trees around here?
making friends is a tool for delicious landscaping
this bermside "bar" offers snacks made from local weeds and homebrewed beer to passers-by
snacking on out-of-control plants in a weird public berm-side offering of friendship, refreshment, and new tastes
mold
chopstick holders from local clay. make meals more "elegant" and connect everyday rituals with stories, routines of making, and local resources.
celebrate the Year of the Dog
carve chopsticks, spoons, sharp sticks
making your own utensils is meditative. it makes you concentrate on the act of eating and brings pleasure in never-finished objects and iterative crafting. it adds another layer to your everyday experience.
experiment and "fold-in" ideas:
cockle grill & foot bath
decorate
with stuff growing at hand
exercise for getting to know plants and learning that "delicious" is not always related to taste
morning walks, casual offerings
delivery of "stumbled upon" veges in the Mairangi Arts Centre bush/hugelkultur patch
Based on: The One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming by Masanobu Fukuoka
Let's learn and do about "do-nothing" gardening together in this group which combines reading and talking with practical "do-nothing" exercises in the Mairangi Art Centre gardens (hint and warning: "do-nothing" does not exactly mean doing nothing!)
imbibe
wine from unglazed vessels of Mairangi Bay clay. Lack of glaze causes aeration for enhanced flavor and leaves stain memories on your wares
steep dandelion flowers in hot water for soothing tea and vivid color. add sugar for PUNCH. to each their own...
experiment, enjoy
making local clay dishes and cups and improvising snacks and treats to match and mutually improve
feed others
raise a ginger beer bug
play with natural soda making with living beings
introduce
your taste "sensations" to your neighbours (here, free a ginger beer tasting stall and recipe dispensary)
another style of home brew with donated tools
KAKUREYA
a friendly and improvised kakureya (Japanese: hidden spot) for slow and convivial eating, luring neighbours in off the street with a sign, using donated or improvised utensils, foraged common weeds, junk food, and canned #####
multifunctional devices
roast marshmallows, warm a footbath
bath from local residential rennovation, fire tin an oil can from local restaurant, skewers washed and reused from community yakitori feast, marshmallows from junk food aisle of local "super" market. Contraption by local weirdo, repurposed for more pleasures by kids.
mixtures of common weeds, slightly treated with common household pantry items
nasturtium leaves/flowers, onion weed (wild garlic) flowers/roots/stems, puha
spring onion factory
cut of roots of store-bought spring onions and leave in water to create infinite supply
berm-side oh! tsumami (drinking snacks) community feast open to chance encounter
snacking on shungiku grown in MAC gardens
(Glebionis coronaria, formerly called Chrysanthemum coronarium, is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family.)
always-growing menu at berm-side feast. new friends add their contribution to the menu as they arrive - a slightly wonky, out-of-countrol, and quite mysterious mix
berm-side Oh! Tsumami public feast of handmade snacks for "anyone"
mammoth, unruly, sun shade built at Rangitoto Kindergarten during Making Friends project
stocking up
ginger beer all year round and onion weeds from ANY park (that is not poisoned by chemicals) in spring
sweet sorrel syrup
kind of lemonade made from common weed
boil up a bunch in water with appropriate amount of sugar to form thick cordial (not toffee!). chill. mix with chilled water/soda water for weed lemonade that ACTUALLY is a treat
bamboo shoots
all over MAC and surrounding areas...
delicious treat for spring/summer, unexpectedly cut down and ground to nothing by council maintenance team one day. experience teaches us to notice and savour the various levels that our city infrastructures work on
decorate
with wild flowers in morning meditation session, explore your surrounds in fine detail
umeshu
plum infused liquor
plums from fallen fruit at Rangitoto Kindergarten during sun-shade making workshop with waste fabric, summer-time.
preliminary activities (June - Oct 2017)
Juicing the Bay!
June 27/29 at MBS
This was a large-scale juicing and preserved syrup making session (riot!) using donated fruit from neighbourhood trees!
"weeds" tempura cafe
A free roadside cafe travelling around our streets offering tempura treats (savoury and sugar-cinnamon "donuts") made of edible "weeds" and flowers in our local parks and informal greenspaces. Also offers MAC-brewed ginger soda - MORE
roadside halloween stall
with Japanese-style handmade treats (baby castella choco dip, cucumber and miso dip) and roasted marshmallows over Japanese grill - courtesy of Weird Bird
ginger soda experiments
A session which involved experimenting with various flavourings for MAC-brewed ginger soda - MORE
handcrafted lollypops
candy created from sugar syrup of local "weeds" (yellow wood sorrel and mint) and sticks hand carved from fallen twigs - MORE
"do nothing onion" session
introducing and snacking on "onion weed" - a free and delicious treat commonly found in parks and informal greenspaces all over Auckland during Aug-Oct - at Mairangi Bay School during lunchtime.
We did the first planting of the MBS Orchard at Mairangi Bay School on Sept 1!
Thank you to all who helped out with the first planting of the MBS orchard on Sept 1.
Creating a delicious resource for our school is fun and relaxing when there are so many hands and hearts!
Please join the MBS PTA Facebook group or sign up for email updates to find out about future plans and community feasts! - Of course, if you have any ideas, we are very happy to help you do them!
juicer apparatus improvisations
Tracey and Chris' juicing station at Mairangi Arts Centre was appropriated by many and turned into a toolkit for improvising weird juicing machines over the school holidays!
hanging garden
Amy introduced us to the wonders of cut-up wine bottle self-watering hanging gardens as part of our ongoing investigations into a more edible Mairangi Bay...
are you interested in the Mairangi Orchard?
It's a free orchard scattered around our neighbourhood, made up of existing fruit trees in private gardens and public spaces. Excess fruit is used in free workshops to make delicious and useful treats for all.
DIY microgreen nursery for small spaces
Amy introduced us to the powers of this mysterious microgreen growing machine as part of our investigations into a more edible Mairangi Bay
kawakawa & orange experiment
happened at Mairangi Arts Centre on 13 (Tues) June, Morning-Tea Time.
we took a chance on pleasure and taste, making kawakawa-infused oranges, and a peel + kawakawa tea using resources from the neighbourhood.
harvest
Many people kept anonymously replenishing our stock of seasonal citrus from local private gardens but when we ran low we took out this weird handmade "wheelbarrow" made of stuff scavanged from "around here".
+ in collaboration with Mairangi Arts Centre, provided with support, in part, from Hibiscus and Bays Local Board (First Main Project, Nov 2017 - April 2018) and Creative Communities Scheme (Preliminary Activities, June-Oct 2017)
